Posted on Monday, November 19, 2018
Guest Commentary/Posted Nov. 19, 2018
By Darrell Steinberg
Special to CALmatters
It’s an amazing story, really. A testament to the priorities – and the hearts — of California voters.
Earlier this month, more than 6.5 million people voted in favor of Proposition 2, the initiative that will generate billions of dollars to build supportive housing, linked to services and treatment, for people living with a serious mental illness who are homeless or at risk of chronic homelessness.
Proposition 2 not only passed. It drew more votes than any proposition on the statewide ballot.
The outcome underscores the extent to which people across this state recognize homelessness as a crisis that is tearing at the fabric of our communities. How many times have you walked by someone huddled in a doorway, disheveled and disoriented, and wondered, “What can one person do?”
About a third of the people subsisting on our streets and alleys live with untreated mental illness. Without stable housing, the challenges of getting them into effective treatment and recovery are monumental and sometimes impossible. Instead, our police and firefighters have become the first and last resort for responding to people in psychiatric crisis.
Proposition 2 offers a real, evidence-based solution: stable housing partnered with wraparound services.
And voters’ overwhelming support for its passage marks a call to arms: We need to attack homelessness–and the untreated mental illness that so often lands people on the streets—as the public health crisis that it is.
We need to move fast, as we do when responding to other disasters of monstrous proportion. We need to get this money out and ensure our cities and counties work collaboratively to get the housing built, and to pair those homes with the services that make this treatment model successful.
So what happens now?
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Posted on Wednesday, November 7, 2018
Dear Friends,
We wanted to take a moment to recognize a truly watershed moment for mental health care in California. On Tuesday, state voters approved Proposition 2, culminating three years of hard work, advocacy and outreach by our institute and so many of our friends and fellow advocates across the state and on both sides of the political aisle.
This is no small victory. Proposition 2 at long last launches the “No Place Like Home” Program and will address a critical missing link in California’s continuum of care for people living with serious mental illness. It means a $2 billion infusion to build permanent supportive housing, linked to treatment and services, for people living homeless with a serious mental illness. Every county in California stands to benefit. Over the course of the program, we expect this pivotal investment to generate 20,000 units of housing linked to evidence-based services – and to move tens of thousands of people off the streets and into recovery.
Most of us are deeply aware of the strain homelessness has put on our neighborhoods, businesses, law enforcement and sense of community. We also know that about a third of the people living on the streets are there with untreated mental illness. This is a public health travesty that results in untold suffering and hundreds of deaths every year. By approving Proposition 2, Californians have stepped up strong to address this crisis, and we will see a difference.
So, how will it work? The state will draw on a very small portion of MHSA funds to leverage $2 billion in bonds to build permanent supportive housing that, by statute, must be linked to intensive treatment and services. The program is structured so that all counties have access to funding. And most are eager to launch: At this point, every county in the state has applied for – and been awarded – a NPLH planning grant.
Proposition 2 gives our communities a road map – and financial incentive — to invest meaningful resources in a proven model of care. Our heartfelt thanks for your support as we have fought to make this a reality. Without question, it will mean a better California.
In Partnership,
Darrell Steinberg/Founder
Maggie Merritt/Executive Director
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Posted on Tuesday, October 2, 2018
BY THE LOS ANGELES TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD
Of the roughly 134,000 homeless people on the streets of California, about a third are seriously mentally ill. Their illnesses cannot be successfully treated on sidewalks. They must get housing first. That’s why the state of California wisely enacted Assembly Bill 1816 two years ago to raise $2 billion to build or preserve permanent supportive housing for homeless people suffering from mental illness.
The bonds authorized by the program would be paid off by temporarily using a small portion — just about 6% — of the revenue generated by Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act, which voters approved in 2004 to provide mental health treatment programs and services in the state. The proposition imposed a 1% surcharge on incomes above $1 million, which is expected to generate more than $2 billion this year alone. But the housing program — titled No Place Like Home — has been stymied by a lawsuit that contends the Mental Health Services Act was never intended to be spent on housing.
Voters will have the chance to resolve this issue in November by passing a ballot measure, Proposition 2, that would explicitly allow Mental Health Services Act dollars to be spent on the No Place Like Home program. We strongly endorse it.
Click here to read the full article.
Posted on Thursday, September 27, 2018
Governor Jerry Brown today signed into law Senate Bill 1004, marking a watershed moment for the delivery of mental health care in California. The bill will ensure far more families across the state have access to high-quality mental health services that aim to intervene before a brain illness becomes disabling. By requiring California to be more strategic in its approach to prevention and early intervention in mental illness, SB 1004 has the potential to change the lives of tens of thousands of Californians at risk of a serious brain illness and ultimately to turn the tide in our homelessness crisis.
SB 1004, co-authored by Senators Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, and John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, was the Steinberg Institute’s priority legislation for 2018. It marks a major step in our efforts to standardize and scale up access to high-quality prevention and early intervention (PEI) programs funded by the Mental Health Services Act. That’s the millionaire’s tax passed in 2004 that now generates $2.2 billion a year for mental health care in California.
Click here to read the full article.
Posted on Monday, September 24, 2018
What is Proposition 2?
Proposition 2 will provide permanent supportive housing linked to treatment and services to help people with serious mental illness who are experiencing homelessness or at risk of becoming homeless.
Why do we need Proposition 2?
We have a homelessness crisis in California that is straining our neighborhoods, businesses and public services. More than 134,000 Californians are living on the streets and as many as one-third of them are suffering from untreated mental illness. We also know the solution: Research shows that providing permanent supportive housing, linked to intensive services, has proven successful at getting people who are homeless and have a serious mental illness off the streets and into effective care. A recent RAND analysis that tracked a permanent supportive housing program in Los Angeles County found the foundation of housing helped get more than 3,500 people off the streets since 2012 and reduced taxpayer costs by 20 percent.
Who is the target population to be served?
Prop 2 will help adults with serious mental illness and children with severe emotional disorders and their families who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.
How does Proposition 2 work?
Prop 2 builds permanent supportive housing linked to mental health treatment and services – at no new cost for taxpayers – under a $2 billion bond. The bond will be financed using the Mental Health Services Act, also known as Proposition 63, the millionaire’s tax passed by California voters in 2004 that now generates $2.2 billion annually to improve mental health care across the state. Prop 2 will use just 6 percent of the annual revenue generated under the Act, with funding going to local communities and all California counties to support planning and construction of permanent supportive housing. The housing must be linked to support services for residents that are on site or easily accessible.
Click here to read the full article.
Posted on Monday, September 24, 2018
BY MERCURY NEWS & EAST BAY TIMES EDITORIAL BOARDS
You see them every day: Homeless people with mental illnesses wandering the streets with nowhere to go and no one to care for them.
It’s heartbreaking. Especially for those who understand that mental health disorders are physical diseases little different from heart or bone conditions except in our lack of understanding of how the mind works. Many forms of mental illness are treatable, if not curable, if those suffering can be given secure housing and the treatment and services they deserve.
Proposition 2 is designed to take a serious run at solving that problem. The measure would allow the Legislature to issue $2 billion of bonds to fund housing for homeless people with mental health problems. The money to pay off the bonds — estimated at $120 million a year — would come directly from Proposition 63 revenues, the tax on wealthy Californians that voters passed in 2004 to finance better mental health care.
It’s both a humane and smart use of funds. Voters should give Prop. 2 overwhelming support on Nov. 6.
Click here to read the full article.
Posted on Wednesday, September 19, 2018
BY THE SACRAMENTO BEE EDITORIAL BOARD
Thanks to the housing crisis, California also has the dubious distinction of leading the nation in homelessness. Nearly a quarter of the men, women and children who don’t have a permanent residence live here, increasingly in tents on street corners and often with an untreated mental illness.
Proposition 2 would address that.
The measure would finally let counties use money from Proposition 63 to pay for the construction of permanent housing for homeless people, as long as that housing includes a direct connection to supportive social services.
Click here to read the full article.
Posted on Wednesday, September 19, 2018
BY THE CHRONICLE EDITORIAL BOARD
Darrell Steinberg, long one of the state’s leaders in mental-health policy, had always envisioned that housing would be key to the strategy of stabilizing people with severe mental illness. California voters in 2004 approved Steinberg’s Proposition 63, a surtax on income over $1 million to expand mental-health programs — but the measure did not explicitly mention housing.
Prop. 2, on the Nov. 6 ballot, would close that gap. It would authorize $2 billion in bonds from the Mental Health Services Act (as Prop. 63 is known) to build supportive housing for people with severe mental illness who are either homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. The bond repayment would amount to about $130 million a year out of a fund that is now bringing in about $2 billion annually.
Click here to read the full article.
Posted on Monday, September 10, 2018
BY THE LOS ANGELES TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD
Like much of the rest of the nation, California went only halfway toward keeping its promise to improve mental health care. It closed psychiatric hospitals, some of which were really just costly warehouses for the sick rather than modern medical facilities offering effective treatment. But the state didn’t follow through on its commitment to provide better alternatives, like community-based clinics that deliver the treatment and services needed to integrate patients into society, working and living independently where possible.
We can see the result of those half-measures every day. About a third of homeless people in Los Angeles and across the country are on the street because of untreated mental illnesses that prevent them from staying housed or holding down a job.
We’ve begun to make amends, at least of a sort. Fourteen years ago, voters passed Proposition 63, known informally as the millionaires’ tax and more properly as the Mental Health Services Act. It raises billions of dollars for services.
More recently, Los Angeles voters adopted tax measures to raise money for supportive housing — units that will give homeless people, including those with serious mental health challenges, the opportunity for dignified and independent living while receiving the medical care and services they need to hold their illnesses at bay and stay off the streets.
These are fine programs, but if they’re all we’ve got they will be futile. The ranks of mentally ill homeless Californians are constantly being replenished. As fast as we can lead the sick and suffering into homes, they are replaced on the street by new generations of people whose mental illnesses were left undiagnosed or untreated at an early stage, when they still could have been held in check.
Click here to read the full article.
Posted on Thursday, August 30, 2018
August 29, 2018
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Victor Ruiz-Cornejo, victor.ruiz-cornejo@sen.ca.gov, 415.604.6817
Sacramento – Today, Senator Scott Wiener’s (D-San Francisco) Senate Bill 1004, a bipartisan bill to expand effective prevention and early intervention programs for children, teenagers, young adults, and underserved individuals experiencing early signs of severe mental illness passed the California Assembly by a vote of 61-0. SB 1004 now heads to the Senate for its final vote.
SB 1004 requires a much more structured and strategic approach to prevention and early intervention mental health programs funded by the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA),passed by California voters in 2004 through Proposition 63 to provide funding for community-based mental health services
The bill is sponsored by the Steinberg Institute, founded by Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who authored Prop 63.
Click here to read the full article.
